9
A pseudopod of the ghost stuff ringing Kapi Yuntipek stayed with Korimenei as she rode away from the city a week later, a clotted white finger set firmly on her, unable to touch her; she ignored it, kept her pony pacified and moving along at a steady walk. Behind her, Ailiki perched on the pack pony, calming the little gelding and holding him in place. Abruptly the pseudopod snapped back and they were moving through a bright chill day; the air was so clear the mountains seemed close enough to touch.
The Silk Road was not much of a road despite its fame. It was a dusty path marked by stone cairns spread so that the pile ahead came into view as the pile behind sank below the horizon. At the moment it was winding in lazy curves through the thin rind of small farms north of the city, going across bridges like hiccups over narrow ditches, thumbnail scratches filled with water from the river. Temu serfs working in the fields straightened and watched her, their dark eyes wary and hostile. The land they stood on belonged to the Kangi Pohgin, the Headman of Kapi Yuntipek; they were worked until they dropped, two-thirds of every harvest was taken from them, they were exposed to depredations from stray raiders out of the Temueng grassclans and bandits sweeping down from the mountains; they expected nothing but harassment from everyone outside their own families. They reminded her of the lowlanders in Cheonea; they had the same hard, knotty look, the same secret stares, the same sense they were rooted to the landheart, mobile manshaped extensions of the soil they stood on. If she gave them any opening they would swarm over her and leave nothing but bones behind; that was in their eyes and the set of their bodies.
When she came out of the farms she rode between walls of Temu grass that reached past her stirrups, swaying in the eternal east wind, the individual rustles of stalk rubbing against stalk sunk into a vast murmuring whole. It was a hypnotic sound. She swam in it, breathed it; after an hour or so she seemed to hear voices in it whispering secrets she couldn’t quite make out. North and east of the city the grass stretched out and out, to the horizon and past, an ocean of yellow and silver-dun, rippling, constantly changing color, subtle changes, barely distinguishable shades of the base colors. An ocean of grass wide as any water ocean.
The piercing, aching loneliness she’d felt in the city fell gradually away from her as she shed the sense of pressure, of neediness, the hurry-hurry, get-on-with-it that afflicted her within those walls; she settled into the long slow rhythms of the land, birth, growth, death, rebirth, inevitable, unchanging, eternal. She was an infinitesimal mote in that immense landscape, but she didn’t feel diminished, no, it was almost as if her skin had been peeled back so she was no longer closed within it but was intimately a part of that vast extravagant sky, that shimmering ocean of grass.
After about three hours she stopped, watered the ponies at one of the Road Wells and let them graze. She leaned against a cairn, crossed her ankles. Ailiki jumped on her stomach; she laughed and began scratching the mahsar behind her twitching ears.
“What are you doing, Kori?” Tres eidolon hung above her, his voice cut through her drowse. “Why are you just sitting there? Get moving. You have to beat the snow.”
“So you’re back.” She continued to stroke the mahsar. “How nice.”
As he always did, he ignored questions expressed or implied. “You can’t waste a minute, you have to cross the Dautas as soon as possible.”
“Tre…” She sighed. “You know what riding stock is like, you push too hard and they quit on you, you can’t have forgot that, what’s wrong with you?”
“You know what’s wrong.” The crystal vibrated though the mouse-sized figure of the boy inside changed neither expression nor position. “I want out of this.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” She sighed. “If I push the ponies too hard, this jaunt stops before the day’s out. Quit niggling at me, Tit, I know what I’m doing.” She lifted Ailiki off her. “Go fetch them, Lili; they’ve had enough rest for now. Tit, what about the weather? From here, it looks clear enough, but that’s a lot of mountains.”
“No blizzards yet. There are some washouts from rain, a lot of rain has been falling, no snow, I’m not sure why. There’s black ice in the passes; it makes treacherous going. You should try to hit the steepest slopes in the afternoon, when the sun’s been at the ice long enough to clear some of it out. If there is any sun.”
“Lovely. Look, Tre, you seem to show up when you want to stick pins in me and ignore me otherwise. I’m trying to remember you’re my brother; don’t leave me hanging out to dry, help me. Talk to me even if there’s nothing else you can do.”
The eidolon flickered, faded, appeared again like a washed-out watercolor painted on the air, vanished completely.
Korimenei sighed, got to her feet. The ponies were standing on the Road, foam dripping from their mouths as they chewed at a last clump of grass. She smiled wryly as Ailiki ran up the packer’s side and perched on its withers. “Aili my Liki, I’m beginning to wonder what the hell’s going on here.”
The mahsar folded her arms across her narrow chest and took on the aspect of Sessa who looked after lost trinkets, one of the little gods who scampered like mice from person to person, coming unasked, leaving without warning, a capricious, treacherous, much courted clutch of godlings. She nodded gravely, but what she meant by it was impossible to guess.
“You’re a big help.” Korimenei shook her head, swung into the saddle and nudged the pony into a plodding walk.
10
Two weeks slid past. Korimenei rode and walked, walked and rode, nibbled at trailbars and apples during the day, usually while the ponies grazed, cooked up stew and panbread When she camped for the night, washing these down with strong tea and a bowl of the rough red wine she’d picked up in Kapi Yuntipek. Water wasn’t a problem, there were wells and troughs at intervals along the road. The sky stayed clear, there wasn’t any frost in the morning, the air was too dry, but even long after the sun came up, the days were crackling cold. Despite that, she passed up the Waystop Inns as she came to them, riding on to camp at one of the wells. As if he were trying to make up for a fault he wasn’t about to admit, Tre came each night with a weather report and stayed to chat a little, mostly about what had been happening to Korimenei, he said it was because he was sealed in crystal, stuck in the cave; since nothing was happening to him, there was nothing to talk about unless they went over and over past times which he didn’t want to do. She grew easier in her mind; she wanted to believe that the closeness they’d shared was still there, waiting to be resumed when he was free.
In the third week she left behind the last sparse clumps of Ternu grass and moved into the foothills of the Dhia Dautas. The waves of land had a flat wispy ground cover, gray-brown, limp; there seemed to be no vigor in it, but the ponies relished it when she let them graze. The thorn-studded brush had small leaves that a series of hard frosts had turned into stiff rounds of maroon leather, and copper-colored crooked branches that wove in and out of each other to form a dense prickly ball that only changed size as it aged, not conformation. It grew in tangled clumps in and around dumps of boulders like the droppings of some immense and incontinent beast.
In the fourth week she was on the lower slopes of the mountains winding upward toward the first LowPass, moving through thick stands of trees and a different ground cover, broad-leafed vines that were crimson and gold, crawling across red earth that crumbled into a fine dust which settled on every surface and worked its way into every crevice. The slopes were steeper, the air thinner and colder.
It cut her throat like knives when she was winded near the top of a rise and breathing through her mouth. She saw deer and fiarru herds, wolves trotting in ragged lines, sangas and mountain cats sunning on boulders or in trees, squirrels and rabbits and other small scuttlers, birds hopping along the ground, feeding on seeds and insects. There was a sense of waiting in the air, a feeling that the season was changing, but not yet. Not quite yet. Most mornings there were only a few wisps of cloud scrawled across the sky; as each day wore on, though, the clouds thickened and darkened, the light took on a pewter tinge, colors were darker, richer. She saw no one, the road was open, empty, but she was aware several times of eyes watching her. She ignored them. Let them watch.